My thoughts on the Holocaust Museum shooting
It is yesterday, around 1:15. I am making tuna noodle casserole and snickerdoodles to celebrate the end of my finals. The TV is on, but on one is watching. My mother comes home and goes in to the living room. "Why is there a guy with a yarmulke (skullcap) on TV?" Her voice is panicked. She can see him in the background of a news broadcast. My brother and I rush in. We think something might have happened in Israel. Maybe someone blew up another bus or a restaurant). But no. It happened in our country. I get even more panicked; it happened in Washington. The eighth graders from my school always go on a trip there; a friend of mine was just telling me how much she misses her sister when she's away. The guy giving the press conference has very little information. He keeps saying that he'll check up on everything. All we know is that a guard was wounded and was taken to GWMed.
I found out later that he died.
I love that guard. I love what he stood for; I love what he did. I love that out of everything he could have done, he chose to protect a place of sanctity, a place of mourning, a place of remembrance.
With the Holocaust Museum, we promised not to forget. But what of the people who have never remembered? I do not understand how people can turn their backs on clear, obvious and brutal evidence. At my school, when you take Jewish History class, five months of study are devoted solely to the Holocaust. We analyzed documents and watched movies and saw photos. The Nazis documented everything- they were planning to make their own museum to remember that "extinct race of Jews." How can someone ignore that?
My grandfather was born in Romania in 1927. He and his family were marched out of their home and taken to a labor camp in the region of Transnistria. It is now called the Romanian Auschwitz or the Romanian killing field. He survived through the amazing work of a man called Siegfried Jagendorf (Think of him as a Romanian Schindler). He got his mother and brother through by befriending a cook and getting extra eggs and potatoes. His father was killed in a labor accident. We don't know where he is buried. Years later, my great-uncle visited his home town. He saw his house. He went next door; a neighbor who had been alive at the time still lived there. He asked her "What happened to the Jews here?" "They just left one day," she replied. On the way out, he saw his parents' grandfather clock in her dining room.
I guess people have been turning a blind eye to the Holocaust for years. I just wish we could make them see.
Perhaps I am personalizing the issue, but I feel that it is personal. When someone makes a violent attack against what I stand for, it is personal.
This summer, I'm visiting Israel for the third time. Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Museum, was closed for renovations during my first trip. We were only able to drive through the grove of trees that surrounds it; that alone made me cry. Each tree (and there are rows and rows of them) represents a "righteous gentile," a non-Jewish person who risked their life to help Jews during the Holocaust. It should not have been a risk for Steven Tyrone Johns to go to work. He should not have had to be a righteous gentile.
I do not think I will sleep well tonight.
I found out later that he died.
I love that guard. I love what he stood for; I love what he did. I love that out of everything he could have done, he chose to protect a place of sanctity, a place of mourning, a place of remembrance.
With the Holocaust Museum, we promised not to forget. But what of the people who have never remembered? I do not understand how people can turn their backs on clear, obvious and brutal evidence. At my school, when you take Jewish History class, five months of study are devoted solely to the Holocaust. We analyzed documents and watched movies and saw photos. The Nazis documented everything- they were planning to make their own museum to remember that "extinct race of Jews." How can someone ignore that?
My grandfather was born in Romania in 1927. He and his family were marched out of their home and taken to a labor camp in the region of Transnistria. It is now called the Romanian Auschwitz or the Romanian killing field. He survived through the amazing work of a man called Siegfried Jagendorf (Think of him as a Romanian Schindler). He got his mother and brother through by befriending a cook and getting extra eggs and potatoes. His father was killed in a labor accident. We don't know where he is buried. Years later, my great-uncle visited his home town. He saw his house. He went next door; a neighbor who had been alive at the time still lived there. He asked her "What happened to the Jews here?" "They just left one day," she replied. On the way out, he saw his parents' grandfather clock in her dining room.
I guess people have been turning a blind eye to the Holocaust for years. I just wish we could make them see.
Perhaps I am personalizing the issue, but I feel that it is personal. When someone makes a violent attack against what I stand for, it is personal.
This summer, I'm visiting Israel for the third time. Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Museum, was closed for renovations during my first trip. We were only able to drive through the grove of trees that surrounds it; that alone made me cry. Each tree (and there are rows and rows of them) represents a "righteous gentile," a non-Jewish person who risked their life to help Jews during the Holocaust. It should not have been a risk for Steven Tyrone Johns to go to work. He should not have had to be a righteous gentile.
I do not think I will sleep well tonight.